The majority of articles that I have scanned and read on the internet seem to carry through on the general media slant that Snowden is a SPY. (The one significant exception is the article by Daniel Ellsberg on his web site) Snowden is not a spy, unless intelligence analysts need to have a new job reclassification as "spy". As Samantha Fox notes, in the reader comment section: "Snowden has violated his agreement to protect classified information, which is a crime." and to briefly conclude her remarks, "He is a whistleblower". He has taken extreme risk for his own life for certain principles of/about government. ( Samantha goes into a diversion about a few other people whose principles may be highly questionable. Her continuing digression really distorts and distracts from the real issues that probably prompted action by Snowden.)

So, What does Lilia accomplish in her article? As a reader, I am presuming from her name that she is probably Russian or of some Slavik heritage. As a reader, I also think it's a well-timed plug of a "whatever" kind of an approved, and tolerable "Moscow" media release. I like her approach using the "Snowden story" as a comparison to a "le Carre novel". So much of any story that hits any media site includes a lot of fundamental fiction from one extreme to another, anyway.

Snowden has taken the ultimate risk for his country by putting his own life on the choppy public media block.

Lilia addresses the real issues about the real espionage. It's so fundamentally tragic that the US political leadership including Obama has refused to acknowledge their fundamental betrayal of their nation as political leaders.

The fact is that there are no values that the West espouses at all anymore. Bush revealed that fact, and Obama has confirmed that fact. Snowden has revealed that most US citizens are not very politically astute, including myself. When it gets to the nitty gritty, most of us don't have any guts either, including myself. I'm a scared chicken little.

Yes, the state has to protect itself. Yes, the state has superior rights to examine what is the "greater good" for the nation. However, there are limits, checks and balances established according to the political constitution. Yes, historically, some of the verbiage of the original constitution could not foresee the internet. However, the principles that the original writers, who themselves were imperfect men in their daily lives, encompass principles that cannot be forgotten, ignored or lost today.

The US political and judicial system need to salvage a level of justice for Snowden and Manning so that basic principles for American citizens are not destroyed for the daily lives of the majority of American citizens.

It will be interesting to read the judicial decisions and the reasoning for any subsequent decisions. If a majority of American citizens conclude that resulting decisions are unreasonable, eventually there will only be further dissolution of any reasonable democracy for the US. It seems to me that any generalized version of democracy is pretty much hanging by a thread in the real world. Isn't American society today pretty much a predatory pool where a few sharks amuse themselves by targeting, and consuming all the other fishes big or small worldwide.

What Snowden has revealed can be a real historical turning of the historical tide for not just one nation, and one group of human beings. He took a critical step that has affected his own life. History will reveal if any real critical choices are made by other human beings, especially American political leadership in 2013.

Snowden took action that is a repeat of the actions taken by Ellsberg. How will the American Judicial system judge the same actions, by a different actor in 2013, or whenever this latest story gets judged by a real judge/jury?

In the meantime, the 3-Billion or so advertising industry has another juicy story to bait the general public worldwide. OMG, without all these great characters and their stories, wouldn't the shark species become extinct?
Kinda reminds me about the condition of any resemblance to any interpretation of American democracy and any good ole American values or principles, like right and wrong, or good and bad actions.

You're right Lilia, Putin is the winner. Obama is the loser. Snowden is the trump card that will just get brushed off the table, while the real players wait for a new deck of cards, unless they decide to switch to monopoly. What a dilemma!

Snowden has violated his agreement to protect classified information, which is a crime. But in reality, he has revealed only one actual secret that matters, which is the United States government’s serial violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution through its collection of personal information on millions of innocent American citizens without any probable cause or search warrant.
That makes Snowden a whistleblower, as he is exposing illegal activity on the part of the federal government. The damage he has inflicted is not against U.S. national security but rather on the politicians and senior bureaucrats who ordered, managed, condoned, and concealed the illegal activity.
Does any president care what is legal? Roosevelt didn't. Nixon didn't. Bush didn't. Obama didn't.
We all know presidents are above the law and they do what they want anyway. Kidnapping, torture, wiretapping, spying, holding people without charges in Guantánamo, data gathering of all sorts with drones and other measures without due cause and in direct violation of the constitution, so clearly the constitution is meaningless already.
US (UK&the lot) willfully breaking laws to attack Iraq illegally murdering thousand of innocent people including women/children & war criminals G.Bush/T.Blair remain scot-free.
When you break the law, you have to be charged and brought to justice especially the murdering thousand of innocent people including women/children (very serious war crimes).
Until G.Bush/T.Blair are charged as war criminals,otherwise no one believe this rule-of-law.
Until G.Bush/T.Blair are charged as war criminals,otherwise these politicians&their generals are just taking too lightly to wage wars leading to killing fields everywhere.
As we've all seen US (UK&the lot) willfully breaking laws to attack Iraq illegally murdering thousand of innocent people including women/children & war criminals G.Bush/T.Blair remain scot-free.
What makes you think that any future US (UK & the lot) leaders will not commit war crimes and breaking laws to invade/attack others?
Until G.Bush/T.Blair are charged as war criminals, every country is compelled to cogently get nuke weapons to protect themselves against hostile US(UK and the lot). They're unequivocally committed & have to be prepared to deal with any eventuality to protect themselves against law-breaking belligerent US(UK and the lot

Snowden was a misfit from childhood. He never even graduated from high-school, when there is sufficient indication that he certainly had the talent to do so.

And, evidently, where he did not have the requisite talent, he went about obtaining it at the NSA.

Just what damage was done to American national security remains hypothetical. An administration seems to want to tell us it was "grave damage. Was it?

"A majority of Americans think he did not breach national security". Puh-leeze!, in what manner does an opinion poll have any bearing upon the question at hand, "Was there a breach of national security?" And if so, who's - ours or someone else's?

Which simply shows how the media has gone off the deep end, in its endless need to "make a deadline", and write "something".

The DoD pipes in to say, "Snowden has the capacity to make real damage!" Oh, really? What he can do is more important that what he did? If so, why all the brouhaha?

This "kid", for all his mischief, has already lost the most precious attribute of his life - the ability to live in the country of his birth without the high probability of going to jail. Isn't that enough punishment for his "supposed crimes"?

MY POINT?

More than anything, he is a testimony to the utter ambivalence of American youth without a moral compass. Which reflects also further into the American public that has become politically apathetic.

It should be more a worry that so few Americans even bother to vote, thus having surrendered election outcomes to a select group that is manipulating politics to its own purposes. That is, a desperate goal to maintain the status-quo in America.

A land where the rich get richer and the rest are going nowhere ... with 15% of them incarcerated below the poverty line. That is, more than 40 million American men, women and children.

The delusion under which this writer forms her argument - that the US is a liberal democracy - renders the entire article moot.

Not only is the US not a liberal democracy, it has exported its state control model though its military and intelligence community to comparable communities in other countries.

Some have jumped at the chance. Britain, the home of democracy, is racing ever faster away from democracy and liberalism.

Democracy has been taken over by corporations and their political class enablers in most western countries. Profitable for the companies and the politicians, not so much for everyone else.

Will any changes result from the Snowden disclosures? Not much chance in the US or Britain, perhaps some other countries will heed the warning and strip their intelligence agencies of all covert domestic powers and most covert foreign powers - in particular activities that take place in allied states.

A system that managed to obscure the activities of the criminal banksters who led the world to the financial cliff will surely be able to erase the Snowden incident from democratic memory.

I think it once was a liberal democarcy, and sometime during by lifetime (current age 80), it became otherwise. When did it happen? Probably long before I realized that it had happened. I hope that we can find our way back. OTOH, it is exciting to think that so many things that I thought were

Milton is right--he chose what he wanted and I can pretty much guarantee that his future will be not quite what he thought.
"the ends justify the means" How deliciously naïve. Any government that doesn't take every means possible to protect its sovereignty is the norm. It was only the American experiment that gave anyone hope that man could change--and now the American experiment has been abandoned by so many in America who would rather use the coercive power of the State to shape "the people" while paying lip service to Freedom. We are all in much greater danger of losing our freedom and ability to choose what life we want to live.

I disagree with the author that "Snowden has effectively given up his future." He has chosen his future! He is not a stupid man. The real human moral story that will unfold if and when he can freely tell his on story, with all of the dilemmas and dangers that he obviously knew he faced. His own story is perhaps the greatest learning that will come from this episode.

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